Refighting Vietnam in Battleground States

TAMPA, Fla. —  Over coffee, the two recent college graduates sat debating the significance of a bitterly contested war that left them deeply divided.

Not Iraq, but Vietnam.

“I don’t care about that war,” said Rich Clark, 25. “It didn’t affect my generation. It’s ancient history.”

His friend begged to differ. “Vietnam is an analog to what’s happening in Iraq, another war America got suckered into and shouldn’t be fighting,” said Julio Torres, 29. “It couldn’t be more important.”

In Florida -- a key battleground in this year’s presidential election -- and elsewhere in the nation, the campaign’s focus has shifted to a tumultuous era of antiwar marches and counter-demonstrations. Three decades after its bitter conclusion, the Vietnam War again is playing a discordant role on the national political stage as debate rages over Sen. John F. Kerry’s record in a military conflict waged before Clark and Torres were born.

The dispute prompted Cheryl Koski, 47, a college journalism professor in Tampa, to pose a question echoed by many voters: “Why are we going back and revisiting all this?”

The newest Vietnam debate has ensnared not only voters who are familiar with the period, such as Koski, but a new generation -- many of whom know little about the conflict and the swirling national ill-will it engendered at home and abroad.

While many younger voters dismiss Vietnam as irrelevant -- their father’s, or even grandfather’s war -- others are hashing over its significance today and whether it should become part of the process in picking the next president.

Among all voters, how those questions are answered could prove crucial to who wins Florida and other closely contested states expected to determine the outcome of November’s vote.

Historians suggest that Vietnam continues to plague the national consciousness because it foreshadowed America’s present-day international status: mired in an unpopular war that has prompted much of the rest of the world to condemn the United States.

“Vietnam remains such a hot-button issue in part because it doesn’t fit into America’s heroic, freedom-loving sense of itself,” said Peter Kuznick, a historian at American University In Washington.

“It’s the most egregious case of us being on the wrong side of history -- the bad guys. And the recent debate over John Kerry’s wartime experiences has forced us to relive that contradiction all over again.”

A group of Vietnam veterans sparked the current controversy with an advertisement that claimed Kerry, a decorated Navy patrol boat commander in Vietnam, embellished the circumstances that led to him receiving medals, including three Purple Hearts. Kerry disputed the accusations, several former crewmates vouched for his heroism and his presidential campaign noted that some of the group’s members previously praised his service record.

The group, Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, has launched a second ad, asserting that Kerry’s antiwar activities after returning from Vietnam disgraced his fellow veterans.

Much of the group’s money has come from supporters of President Bush, and Kerry has said it is a front for Bush’s reelection campaign. Bush aides deny that charge, but Kerry pressed his case Tuesday.

In a speech in New York, just days before the kickoff of the Republican National Convention there, the Democratic presidential candidate accused Bush of using “fear and smear” to divert attention from his administration’s record on jobs, healthcare and other matters.

Bush’s service in the Air National Guard during the Vietnam era also has been criticized by some as an effort to avoid going to Vietnam, underscoring the question of what, if anything, either candidate’s experience during those years says about their ability to perform as president.

While polls in this closely divided state have yet to answer the question, dozens of interviews throughout the Tampa Bay area show that voters -- from college student to baby boomers to retirees -- are split over what importance to place on Vietnam in the national election drama.

“How long ago was that war?” asked St. Petersburg tree trimmer A.J. Wilkerson, 42. “What a man did 30 years ago has absolutely no bearing on who he is today. He could have been crook or a coward back then, but a changed man today.”

Others describe Vietnam as the stage that shows the qualities each candidate brings to the table.

“John Kerry cannot run from the things he did as a young man -- he sold out his fellow soldiers,” said Melissa Chapman, 35, whose father fought in Vietnam and whose husband now serves in the Marine Corps.

“I judge a president over his lifetime actions, not just by who he says he is this election cycle,” she added. “In that way, Vietnam matters.”

Vietnam’s shadow was still evident in a 1995 Los Angeles Times poll, when 72% of respondents called it “one of the worst moments in American history;” while 2% termed it among the nation’s finest moments. In the same poll, 55% said that America remained “deeply divided” over the war, while 38% said the nation was no longer torn by the conflict.

In a Times poll this June regarding the perception of Kerry’s role in Vietnam, 58% of respondents agreed that “in his combat missions in Vietnam, John Kerry demonstrated qualities America needs in a president.” Another 33% thought that “by protesting the war in Vietnam, John Kerry demonstrated a judgment and belief that is inappropriate in a president.”

Since America’s withdrawal from Vietnam in 1975, the nation has revisited the era through movies, television specials and bestselling books.

But with the debate over Kerry’s Swift boat service, the war has barged its way back onto front-page headlines and radio talk shows. One caller to a Tampa radio program this week shouted at the host, arguing that Americans had tried to forget both Vietnam and its veterans.

And many scholars agree.

“Vietnam remains unfinished business in this country,” said Todd Gitlin, a journalism and sociology professor at Columbia University. “It’s also a symbol of everything that divides these two political camps. And as political fodder, Vietnam also lingers. It’s always available as a source of potential scandal.”

Vietnam scholars suggest that the vitriol expressed by many veterans during the Swift boat controversy shows that although many of those who lived through Vietnam had moved past the war, none had forgotten it.

“Vietnam is our nation’s most divisive conflict since the Civil War, which at least had [the South’s formal surrender at] Appomattox to resolve it,” said Kenneth J. Campbell, a Vietnam veteran and professor of international studies at University of Delaware who co-authored “Give Peace a Chance: Exploring the Vietnam Antiwar Movement.”

Campbell added: “Vietnam had no Appomattox. That’s where all the venom comes from. It remains an open national wound covered with Band-Aids.”

Jan Barry, a co-founder of Vietnam Veterans Against the War, the protest group that Kerry joined and used as a stage for his activism, said that when it came to discussion about the conflict, tempers still flared -- even among friends.

“I’m still mystified why our generation still cannot have a civil conversation about that period of time,” said the 61-year-old journalist. “But we can’t.”

Here on Florida’s Gulf Coast, lingering disagreement over Vietnam hints at the state’s overall ambivalence in the current election. In 2000, George W. Bush won Florida by 537 votes amid allegations of voter fraud and went on to win the presidency. Recent polls give Kerry a slight edge here.

The disagreement divides colleagues, and even friends.

At a Tampa coffeehouse, Nicole Simpson, a 32-year-old undecided voter, was mystified over the attention being paid to Vietnam. “Why keep going back to the past? Let’s look at today, and tomorrow,” she said. “It’s like a bad divorce. You’ll never be happy unless you can get over your mistakes.”

Her friend, Ernie Penn, shook his head. “Vietnam matters,” he said. “Period.”

“We always have to keep an eye on the past,” he said.”

On a break Monday from classes at the University of South Florida campus in St. Petersburg, associate professors Lyman Dukes III and Scott Waring also had different takes on the Vietnam debate.

“It just doesn’t seem constructive,” said Dukes. “It’s all a political smokescreen to cover up what really matters.”

But Waring said, “You can never put history totally behind you. You need to remember both its high points and blemishes.”

St. Petersburg lawyer John Richardson, 37, was too young to experience the Vietnam era. Yet he said he understood the anger still felt by some who fought there.

“It’s hard to be critical of veterans for continuing to bring up that war,” he said. “I wasn’t there to live through what they endured. But it’s hard for them to have an open mind when assessing it. That’s where the anger for John Kerry comes from.”

For her part, Tampa voter Mary Pryor has a visceral reaction to the emphasis the presidential campaign has placed on Vietnam: Enough already.

“Americans want a national dialogue about issues that concern them today,” said the 50-year-old public relations worker. “For every headline or news show that we discuss Vietnam, we miss the chance to talk about the economy or the Iraq war.

“I’m an undecided voter and I’m trying to make an educated choice for our next president. But all I hear is about a war from another time. That’s really unfortunate -- not just for voters like me but for the American people.”